Cage us. Demean us. Blame, suspend, discard and abuse us. This is the new transit agency human relations strategy. We cannot simultaneously drive safely, remain on schedule, provide exemplary customer service, AND physically or emotionally protect every person who rides with us. It's inhuman and foolish to expect anyone to live up to this irrational set of standards.

"I am grateful for our partners at Transit police for their rapid response and arrest of the suspect"

Well guess what?

If it hadn't been for several MAX riders following the guy and keeping an eye on him the cops probably never would have found him!

Mcfarlane is constantly pumping up the police state presence in our lives.Its also interesting that after all this hub-bub over this Police bunker that Trimet is building and the board of directors bragging about the system being so safe because of the extra police there were 2 separate stabbings on the system in a week.

I've been watching these board meetings a long time now and I've got to say I've never seen a more articulate well thought out group of activists speak on the injustice that is carried out by Trimet.

Alas, it was all for nothing, of course. I understand how government works. All the elections, public hearings, surveys, etc are nothing but a fraud. Government is controlled by an elite group of people and the citizens have no input whatsoever into the final policy.Trimet is government, and it functions like government. It's controlled by the elites. They care not what citizens think

I'm very happy to see that the citizens of the Portland area care enough about their transit system to show up at a pivotal meeting. I was giving up any hope of actually seeing citizens caring at all about Trimet issues.Of course it didn't impact the board of sock puppets.They dutifully did their sock puppet thing and passed all the resolutions that Mcfarlane wanted.We know that the citizens have no influence in the affairs of government.

As we all know (except the governor apparently) Trimet is an independent tax farm (aka Kingdom) currently ruled by Neil Mcfarlane who holds virtually all the power in deciding who gets the tax payer funds that are stolen from the citizens for the advantage of various insiders, businesses, cronies etc etc.

Of course Trimet pretends its all about the citizens, just like every tax farm does.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

In our class action lawsuit we sued Trimet for not paying wages for time that we spent getting to road reliefs and not time slipping at end of shift among other things. Trimet transportation distinct has developed this very bad habit of stealing operators time in multiple ways. The latest theft of time is the new HOP pass. Trimet required all operators to get new pictures on the operators time. Now Trimet is requiring operators to pick up the new passes on their own time rather than putting them in the company Mail.This sort of behavior is unconscionable and should not go unchallenged. The Trimet executive class all received races of at least 3%. Trimet union employees got zero. And now they want active employees to spend their own time Dealing with this new HOP pass. Employees are required to have new passes by July 1st or they will be locked out of the garages as the old passes will be deactivated.

One more example of the medias power to create fake controversies. This is so obviously ridiculous on its face that I'm surprised it got printed, well actually I'm not surprised at all. The media, the government, all the elected officials, all conspire 24 hours a day to manipulate the minds of the public.

Notice how many transit operators have been lured into this once-honored
profession the past five years, only to find benefits have
systematically declined in the same time period? There is a reason.
Management, under direct and highly-secret orders from the Department of
Transportation, has put into effect policies that force operators to
adhere to schedules to the fraction of a second. The reason? Because
transit operators are part of the first elimination phase. Timing is
precise, as massive amounts of people will need to be quickly
transported to disposal plants, in order to create the element of
surprise.

Like an idiot I engage their stupidity 'because of the purple line and because my names is Max like the trains here and because it sounds good and because it's symbolic of the subculture of Portland's transit system-the fans, the throwaways, the bloggers, the tweeters, the activists, the groups, the observers, the complainers, the thinkers, the comedians, the protestors, and the daily riders.'

They usually reply with 'oh' or just leave the conversation.

The passion surrounding this transit system is a giant circle jerk. A self pleausre. An indulgence that will never be satisfied. The Purple Line Strangler is my mocking-neigh-my acceptance that all of us who identify issues with Portland's transit system will not live to see the day those issues are resolved. In effect, no matter which gender or sexual preference we assign ourselves today, the transit system in this region is a broken system by design and as such will never be fixed to satisfy our comfort.

Monday, May 1, 2017

One of the most entertaining Trimet operator social media accounts has been @giedosst on twitter. He made it about 3 years and had recently become a rail operator.I'm going to go through his fantastic collection of trimet tweets in the very near future and devote and entire blog post to them.He's leaving to so some writing at a professional level. This is one guy I'm going to miss

In my post "Defend Us, Don't Suspend Us!"
I forgot to add we've been shot at too. Yeah, with actual bullets. I'll
bet our upper management gets squirmy if anyone even raises their voice
at a meeting. No wonder it moved its offices far away from the
action... it's too hot for them.

I've simply had it with this kangaroo court management suspending our
drivers, most of us suffering from some degree of Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome, for defending themselves. According to our union reps, they
totally ignore PTSD and armchair quarterback every situation. Safely, in
the past tense. Study videos of the incidents and such. We can't tell
an assailant, "Now wait a minute before you attempt to murder me. I have
to call our GM and ask him what an appropriate response would be."
"You should have done this, not that," they say later, smugly condemning
us for doing what comes naturally. Easy for them to say.